Murat Bay, the owner of Princes St’s former Anatolia Turkish Kebab House, said he had "no choice" but to place its operating company into liquidation last year.
As well as the Turkish restaurant and takeaways business, Mr Bay said he had lost two other shops in Milton, a section in Waihola and had even mortgaged his house.
"I lost everything."
Anatolia Turkish Cafe Ltd was placed into liquidation by shareholder resolution in September last year.
In their second report, released on April 28, the liquidators said they had received creditor claims totalling $144,392.13 — which included $60,402.67 from preferential and $76,477.78 from unsecured creditors.
"Given the limited assets available, and after deduction of liquidation costs, it is not anticipated that there will be sufficient funds to make a payment [to] preferential or unsecured creditors," the report said.
Mr Bay said he had worked in Dunedin’s hospitality industry for 26 years.
Originally from Kayseri, a large city in Central Anatolia, Turkey, he moved to the city to work for his brother at Paasha Turkish Cafe & Restaurant.
He and his wife later opened Anatolia around 2012, as well as Trojan Turkish Cafe & Restaurant in George St, which was later sold.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, their regulars at Anatolia had started visiting them less and less, citing rising rent and other costs, Mr Bay said.
"The usually regular customers, they come in the week sometimes three or four times, but after they come in maybe in the week one time, couple times.
Too many shops were closing down and the economy was "killing too many businesses", he said.
The company operated Anatolia in Princes St for about 10 years before moving to a larger premises in the ground floor of the street’s historic Excelsior Hotel building in 2023.
That site has since been taken over by Tagpuan, an unrelated Filipino restaurant that started trading last month.
The liquidators’ report said the sale of all physical assets had been completed and the funds received, after costs, would not be sufficient to repay the secured debt in full.
No further assets that would benefit creditors had been discovered at this stage.
It was estimated the liquidation would be completed within the next six months.
